New Castle County, Delaware
New Castle County is the northernmost of the three counties of the U.S. state of Delaware. As of the 2010 census, the population was 538,479, making it the most populous county in Delaware. The county seat is Wilmington.
New Castle County is included in the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD Metropolitan Statistical Area. This county is named after the English city of Newcastle.
New Castle County has the highest population and population density of any Delaware county, even though it is the smallest. It is also the most economically developed of the three.
New Castle County Executive Tom Gordon took office on November 13, 2012.
New Castle County is home to two minor league sports teams: the Wilmington Blue Rocks (baseball) and the Delaware 87ers (basketball) which play in Newark.
It also has a professional auto racing track in New Castle known as Airport Speedway, which races on Saturday nights throughout the summer.
History
The first permanent European settlement on Delaware soil was Fort Christina, resulting from Peter Minuit's 1638 expedition on the Swedish vessels Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel. The Swedes laid out the town at the site of modern-day Wilmington. They contracted with the Lenape Native Americans for land of Old Cape Henlopen north to Sankikans (Trenton Falls), and inland as far as they desired. However, a dispute ensued between the Swedes and the Dutch, who asserted a prior claim to that land.